WESG 2018 World Finals (Women)

by Valentin Gustafsson on 11th Feb, 2019

The CS:GO Women’s event at the World Electronic Sports Games will be held for the second time since it’s inception.

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Freelance eSports Writer

Valentin Gustafsson

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The CS:GO Women’s event at the World Electronic Sports Games will be held for the second time since it’s inception. At the last year’s tournament, we saw the Russian Forces take down the Chinese team LLG Gaming in the finals. Tag along as we give you the rundown of all you need to know about this year’s tournament.

Competition Information

The World Electronic Sports Games (or WESG for short) will be featuring a CS:GO Women’s event for the second time since it’s inception in 2016. Eight teams will duke it out in Chongqing, China for the first place prize of $60,000. The WESG is a tournament which in many ways has taken inspiration from the Olympic Games, meaning that all of the teams competing must be composed of a single nationality. Since it is quite common for teams to be of different nationalities, mix teams are often put together to compete at this event. The eight teams will be split up into two groups and play in a BO2 round-robin format. The top two teams of each group will then advance to a single-elimination BO3 bracket. The tournament kicks off March 13 and the winner will be crowned on March 16.

Russian Forces hoisted the trophy in 2018.

At last year’s tournament, we saw the team Russian Forces take down surprise finalist LLG Gaming to claim the first-place prize of $100,000, the biggest prize ever won in a CS:GO Women’s only tournament. Russian Forces consisted of former Dynasty Gaming duo Kseniya ‘vilga’ Klyuenkova and Anna ‘Ant1ka’ Ananikova as well as star awper Alyona ’Candy‘ Kuvaeva. However, Ant1ka left the team last year and instead joined up with Donut Galaxy, the team now known as Lazarus Esports. The newly formed roster beat Russian Forces in the qualifiers for this event, as a result, the defending champions will not be present at this year’s event.

The Current Season

Those Damn Canadians will be one of the favourites for the title.

One of the big favorites for this year’s competition will definitely be the Canadian mix team ‘Those Damn Canadians’. The star trio of Mounira ‘GooseBreeder’ Dobie, Catherine ‘CAth’ Lerou and Amanda ‘rain’ Smith will be joined by seasoned veteran Stephanie ‘missharvey’ Harvey and newcomer Julie ‘Bouchard’ Bouchard. The Canadians surprisingly lost to the Chinese side of LLG Gaming in the semi-finals of last years tournament but later redeemed themselves with a victory against one of the pre-tournament favorites (Team Sweden fe) in the bronze medal game. With the experience and firepower that the Canadians have at their disposal, anything but a win would be a disappointment.

Hoping to challenge them will be CLG Red, representing The United States. The Americans will be without their Canadian star-player GooseBreeder and have thus opted to turn to long-time professional Christine ‘potter’ Chi. The American most recently played on RES Gaming where she was the main awper for the team. She will likely pick up the AWP for CLG Red as well, which should move Diane ‘di^’ Tran over to a hybrid role. As a result, CLG Red will have one of the best double AWP setups in the tournament which should give them an edge in some matchups.

Ant1ka was on the winning team in 2018. Can she make it two in a row?

Another potential challenger for the title is Russian team Lazarus. They qualified in impressive fashion by taking out last year’s winners, Russian Forces. The team is made up by the core that most recently featured on teams such as Ares fe and London Conspiracy. The likes of Darya ‘dshq’ Mishutina, Alexandra ‘Riley’ Ksenzik, Tanya ‘t4tty’ Vorontsova and Anna ‘Ant1ka’ Ananikova have played together on different teams dating back as far as 2015. The Russians have scalps against teams such as Dignitas fe and CLG Red in the past but have had to settle for second place on numerous occasions as they’ve struggled to overcome their rivals Team Secret. Something that they won’t have to worry about this time around since Team Secret (now Beşiktaş) cannot participate in this event due to the single-nationality rule. Not to mention the fact that Ant1ka, who used to play for Team Secret, is now on their side. Perhaps this will be the time when they finally hoist the trophy?

Team France was another team that qualified for this event in impressive fashion by comfortably taking down Team Sweden, a team which features the likes of Julia ‘juliano’ Kiran and Zainab ‘zAAz’ Turkie — two of the most decorated players in female Counter-Strike. Last year, the French side had a disappointing showing, failing to win a single map against Those Damn Canadians, Team Sweden and shockingly the Chinese team Etab. The team will rely heavily upon Beşiktaş player Meyssa ‘Missa’ Bellouati, who was the team’s best performer at last year’s tournament. It begs the question whether they have enough firepower to really challenge for the title this time around, but a top-three finish is certainly not out of the question.

Can the Chinese team TYLOO (formerly LLG) repeat the success they had in 2018?

Lastly, It would be foolish of me not to bring up last year’s runner-ups; LLG Gaming. The Chinese team now goes under the name of TYLOO and still features the core trio of Ting ‘129’ Yang, Xiao ‘720’ Zhao and DongMei ‘KARMY’ Fang that gave the eventual winners, Russian Forces, a run for their money at last year’s tournament. The team has since bolstered their roster with former Etab duo Wei ‘Pororo’ Hong and Ye ‘M’ Li.

A lot of TYLOO’s success will depend on the performance of 720. The aggressive entry fragger will play a key part in creating the space required for players like KARMY and Pororo to thrive. The Chinese side may not have the name recognition of some of the other teams, but they will be a dangerous opponent to anyone and it would not be surprising to see them cause upsets on home soil yet again.

A recent patch saw price cuts made to the AUG and Krieg. With so little data available on the female teams, it is hard to judge who will benefit the most from this. But my guess would be CLG Red since it will allow di^ to have a scope in hand even when the economy does not allow for an AWP. The AUG also works well in tandem with the M4A1-S that she has used frequently on the CT-side. It will allow her to utilize the stealth of the silenced M4 when she wants to play sneaky, and the range of the AUG when she wishes to take fights from a distance.

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